According to this Independent Task Force, among the most daunting long-term issues confronting Angola now is the resettlement of IDPs and refugees. The United Nations has been involved in the process of repatriation. A collaborative effort between the Angolan government, the UN, NGOs, and business interests will be needed in order to help make return sustainable.

Massive flight from Middle East and North African turmoil has highlighted immigration problems plaguing the European Union, says Jean-Phillipe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration. He says the EU must address comprehensive reform and also invest in countries like Tunisia to stem the long-term flow of migration.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees produces an Asylum Trends reports, which summarizes patterns in the number of individual asylum claims submitted during the previous year in Europe and selected non-European countries.

The Cartagena Declaration on Refugees was adopted by the Colloquium on the International Protection of Refugees in Central America, Mexico and Panama on November 22, 1984. The declaration is a non-binding agreement but has been incorporated in refugee law in various countries.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) states,

"Grounded in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of human rights 1948, which recognizes the right of persons to seek asylum from persecution in other countries, the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted in 1951, is the centrepiece of international refugee protection today. The Convention entered into force on 22 April 1954, and it has been subject to only one amendment in the form of a 1967 Protocol, which removed the geographic and temporal limits of the 1951 Convention. The 1951 Convention, as a post-Second World War instrument, was originally limited in scope to persons fleeing events occurring before 1 January 1951 and within Europe. The 1967 Protocol removed these limitations and thus gave the Convention universal coverage. It has since been supplemented by refugee and subsidiary protection regimes in several regions, as well as via the progressive development of international human rights law."

Jeffrey Crisp, senior director for policy and advocacy at Refugees International, and Rochelle Davis, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Georgetown University, join Andrew Parasiliti, director of the Center for Global Risk and Security at the RAND Corporation, to discuss the long-term welfare of Syrian refugees and the burden on host countries.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres explains how the increasing number of new crises around the world, in areas such as Syria, Sudan/South Sudan, and Mali, has revealed that the capacity of the international community to present conflict is considerably limited.

This meeting is part of the Arthur C. Helton Memorial Lecture series, which was established by the Council and the family of Arthur C. Helton, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who died in the August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. The Helton Lectureship is an annual event at which one or more speakers address pressing issues in the broad field of human rights and humanitarian concerns.

CFR Experts Guide

The Council on Foreign Relations' David Rockefeller Studies Program—CFR's "think tank"—is home to more than seventy full-time, adjunct, and visiting scholars and practitioners (called "fellows"). Their expertise covers the world's major regions as well as the critical issues shaping today's global agenda. Download the printable CFR Experts Guide.

New Council Special Reports

Campbell evaluates the implications of the Boko Haram insurgency and recommends that the United States support Nigerian efforts to address the drivers of Boko Haram, such as poverty and corruption, and to foster stronger ties with Nigerian civil society.

Koblentz argues that the United States should work with other nuclear-armed states to manage threats to nuclear stability in the near term and establish processes for multilateral arms control efforts over the longer term.

The authors argue that it is essential to begin working now to expand and establish rules and norms governing armed drones, thereby creating standards of behavior that other countries will be more likely to follow.

2014 Annual Report

Learn more about CFR’s mission and its work over the past year in the 2014 Annual Report. The Annual Report spotlights new initiatives, high-profile events, and authoritative scholarship from CFR experts, and includes a message from CFR President Richard N. Haass.Read and download »